Upcoming Shows

Submitted by sybok on Mon, 07/20/2015 - 21:13

Actors Collective Media Entertainment brings Holmes for the Holidays
to The Carl Cherry

Local director, actress and playwright Cindy Womack will present the World Premiere of Holmes for the Holidays for six performances only at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts on 4th and Guadalupe, Carmel. Info available (831) 624-7491; info@carlcherrycenter.org

A preview staged reading of her brand new Sherlock Holmes adaptations was workshopped and performed this March at The Western Stage Springfest and the Carl Cherry. The Actors Collective is looking forward eagerly to this full production in Victorian/Edwardian garb, setting and soundscape.

The recent final lapse of copyright on the Sherlock Holmes stories and characters has freed artists from Hollywood to Carmel to adapt and to compose new adventures and Ms. Womack is joining the resulting celebration of Sherlockiana. Her Holmes for the Holidays, which she will direct, consists of two of the world’s only consulting detective’s famous cases. Each story can be presented separately as a one-act, or, as in this production, they can be paired for dramatic effect.

The show begins with an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic “The Blue Carbuncle.” During the Christmas holidays a war veteran hard-up for money brings a little case to Holmes purely to help another unfortunate. Holmes’s deductions trigger surprising events that will change the veteran’s fortunes—and Holmes’s. This case gives us Sherlock at the top of his game in an unusually whimsical adventure. In stark contrast, in the following case of “The Dying Detective,” Dr. Watson must deal with a fatally infected Holmes and a showdown between his now desperate and rapidly failing friend, and Mrs. Culverton Smith, the formidable woman who engineered his ghastly fate.

Unlike the well-received previous readings, this fully produced version of Holmes for the Holidays will include a new short piece by Ms. Womack entitled “The Case of the Subtextual Subterfuge” examining the range of Holmes’s relationship with his landlady Mrs. Hudson, each of them uttering only one phrase to the other, but speaking volumes by their changes in tone as they say it. A staged reading of Ms. Womack’s “A Case of Identity” may also be part of the program or may be presented separately but in conjunction with HFH; perhaps as an audio recording sent to people who donate to the HFH Kickstarter campaign.

So, whether you prefer Gillette, Rathbone, Cushing, Cumberbatch or any of any of many other fine Sherlocks, you and theatre goers who enjoy stagings of the world’s most enduring mysteries are encouraged to come.

The Actors Collective is comprised of professional and amateur actors from various parts of Monterey County and beyond. Jeffrey T. Heyer, co-founder of Actors Collective, the first Actor in Residence at PacRep and TWS Artistic Associate plays Sherlock Holmes. A long time admirer of the Master Reasoner, Mr. Heyer is delighted to be returning to the role, as he has been cast as Holmes a previous nine times, a different problem causing the cancellation of no less than five of these productions. He appeared on stage as Holmes at TWS in The Mask of Moriarty 1999 and Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure 2008, as well as in The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes for the Carl Cherry Arts Center Monologue Festival 2009 and the staged readings of HFH this March.

The other Actors Collective co-founder and Artistic Director Nina Capriola, veteran of GroveMont now PacRep, The Western Stage (TWS) and other companies, will retire from the role of the deadly Mrs. Culverton Smith and focus on producing. The rest of the cast and crew will be determined in the months ahead.